Contemporary Cuba Research Articles

“There is No Race in Cuba”: Level of Culture and the Logics of Transnational Anti-Blackness

While many Cubans of all racialized identities often insist that there is no race or racism in Cuba, they still experience ongoing forms of prejudice and discrimination. This article analyzes the translocal processes through which the logics of racialization and racism circulate in contemporary Cuba. Based on long-term ethnographic research in Santiago de Cuba, known as Cuba’s Blackest City, I analyze the local construct level of culture as central to ongoing processes of racialization in Santiago. I trace Cubans’ experiences of racialization from Santiago to Havana to the United States, connecting their experiences of race and racism to broader transnational forms of anti-Blackness that date back to the colonial era. I show the ways in which the translocal process of racialization through level of culture is not another form of Cuban exceptionalism, but rather links the Cuban experience to broader regional constructs of race, respectability, and culture.

Hollywood in Havana: US Cinema and Revolutionary Nationalism in Cuba before 1959 by Megan Feeney, and: Fidel between the Lines: Paranoia and Ambivalence in Late Socialist Cuban Cinema by Laura-Zoë Humphreys

Reviewed by: Hollywood in Havana: US Cinema and Revolutionary Nationalism in Cuba before 1959 by Megan Feeney, and: Fidel between the Lines: Paranoia and Ambivalence in Late Socialist Cuban Cinema by Laura-Zoë Humphreys Rielle Navitski (bio) Hollywood in Havana: US Cinema and Revolutionary Nationalism in Cuba before 1959 by Megan Feeney. University of Chicago Press. 2019. 320 pages. $105.00 hardcover; $35.00 paper; also available in e-book. Fidel between the Lines: Paranoia and Ambivalence in Late Socialist Cuban Cinema by Laura-Zoë Humphreys. Duke University Press. 2019. 304 pages. $104.95 hardcover; $27.95 paper; also available in e-book. In English-language film studies, perceptions of Cuban cinema are still shaped by an oft-romanticized period in the 1960s, when politically and formally radical works like the recently restored Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968) emerged from the newly created Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos and gained international renown. This vision of Cuban film persists despite growing scholarly interest in its transformation after the fall of the Soviet Union, the subject of recent book-length studies such as Enrique García's Cuban Cinema After the [End Page 208] Cold War, Nicholas Balaisis's Cuban Film Media, Late Socialism, and the Public Sphere, and Dunja Fehimović's National Identity in 21st Century Cuban Cinema.1 Two monographs join this recent crop of works examining Cuban film outside its most familiar parameters, with Megan Feeney's Hollywood in Havana addressing film culture on the island prior to 1959 and Laura-Zoë Humphreys's Fidel between the Lines largely focusing on Cuban cinema from the 1980s to the present. The iconic figure of Fidel Castro, rendered all but inseparable from the Revolution in the discourse of the authoritarian Cuban state, looms as a spectral presence in both books. Hollywood in Havana begins by evoking a famous 1959 photograph of Castro gazing upward at the Lincoln Memorial, a gesture that simultaneously pays homage to US principles of liberty and democracy and offers a rebuke of actual US policies that contradict these ideals. Both are implied by the image's citation of a moment from Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), in which the idealistic protagonist, played by Jimmy Stewart, squares off against a corrupt political establishment.2 For Feeney, the photograph encapsulates how in the years prior to the Revolution, Hollywood cinema served as a means through which Cubans actively imagined political change, even as they resisted the United States' economic and cultural dominance on the island. Feeney writes, "Like Castro in the photo, Cuban film writers and moviegoers paid homage to US ideals and their heroes but also asserted themselves as agents of an adjudicating gaze rather than its passive objects."3 In Fidel between the Lines, Humphreys notes that satirical and critical references to Castro in film act as litmus tests for the shifting and uncertain limits of politically permissible cultural expression in Cuba, defined ambiguously in Castro's famous 1961 speech "Words to the Intellectuals" as "within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, nothing."4 Humphreys argues that these perceived allusions to Castro—whether deliberately inserted by filmmakers or identified by audiences, who have developed a tendency toward "paranoid" modes of reading due to a climate of unpredictable repression—exemplify the dynamic, two-way process through which political allegory is constructed in contemporary Cuba, with creators and consumers playing equally significant roles. Humphreys observes that "[w]hile spectators argued about whether films harbored secret messages against the socialist state, veiled complicity with political leaders, or served as publicity stunts, filmmakers complained that these readings ignored the nuances of their depictions of Cuba and reduced their art to propaganda" and interrogates how "allegory and conflicts over textual interpretation shape [End Page 209] the public sphere."5 Whether focusing on production and audience reception, as in Humphreys's case, or on exhibition and film criticism, as in Feeney's, both books illuminate cinema's role in the collective construction of political imaginaries in Cuba. In her account of pre-revolutionary Cuban film culture, Feeney argues (repurposing language from a 1949 epigraph from Motion Picture Association of...

The One-footed Roller Skater. A Visual Ethnography of Contemporary Cuba

"This article deals with scarcity of goods, consumption, and the ethics of photographing scarcity of goods in contemporary Cuba. It is based on a six-month ethnographic research conducted in 2015 and 2018 respectively and shows some of the photographs I took during these two visits. In the first part I discuss the scarcity and distribution of goods in and out of socialist environments, differences between capitalism and communism and non-traditional methods of consumption. How do desires of consumption impact people in contemporary communist Cuban society? What is the role of Cuban diaspora in sending so-called capitalist goods to Cuba? It also draws a connecting line between a state-controlled communist economy and specific forms of capitalist entrepreneurship, through the existence of a black market and the distribution of goods between people. The second part of the article questions my position in the field as an outsider who was gradually familiarized with the Cuban understanding of the world more generally, and of consumption specifically. How did locals react to photographs taken by foreigners like me? How can two children share one pair of roller skates and distribute their happiness? Making visible certain aspects of scarcity in contemporary communist Cuban society made me realize that photography has a profound ethical dimension."

THE PUZZLE OF RACIAL INEQUALITY IN CUBA, 1980s–2010s

AbstractContrasting perspectives on racism and racial inequality collide in contemporary Cuba. On the one hand, government officials argue that Cuba is a racially egalitarian country; though vestiges of historical racism subsist, systematic discrimination does not. On the other hand, social movement actors and organizations denounce that racism and discrimination are systemic and affect large sectors of the Afro-Cuban population. To draw these visions into scholarly dialogue, our analytic strategy consists in the comparative examination of both narratives as well as the empirical bases that sustain them. Using data from the 1981, 2002, and 2012 Cuban Censuses for the first time, as well as various non-census evidentiary sources, both quantitative and qualitative, we examine how racial inequality has evolved in Cuba during the last decades. Our analyses of census data suggest that racial stratification has a limited impact on areas such as education, health care, occupation, and positions of leadership. We find, nonetheless, that an expanding and strikingly racialized private sector is fueling dramatic income inequality by skin color beyond the reach of official census data. Our analysis sheds light on how different data can convey profoundly different pictures of racial inequality in a given context. Moreover, we highlight that significant contradictions can coexist in the lived experiences of racism and racial inequality within a single country context.

Beyond Cuban Waters: África, La Yuma, and the Island's Global Imagination by Paul Ryer

Reviewed by: Beyond Cuban Waters: África, La Yuma, and the Island's Global Imagination by Paul Ryer Lisandro Pérez Paul Ryer, Beyond Cuban Waters: África, La Yuma, and the Island's Global Imagination. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2018. 226 pp. In the introductory chapter to Beyond Cuban Waters, Paul Ryer lays out the scope: "Core topics of this work include socialism, state bureaucracy, surveillance; the economic and social crisis of the Special Period and resulting everyday struggles of luchando, inventando, and resolviendo; the reproduction and transformation of racism and racial identities; cubanidad, tourism and national: foreign boundaries; Cuban religion/religious revival; reciprocity, socios, and sociolismo; gender divisions and sexuality; socialist theory; and the transformation of production, distribution, and consumption." The introductory chapter, therefore, leaves the reader adrift in the vast menu of topics the author tells us he intends to cover, thus failing to provide, at the outset, a clear statement of the focus of the work. The introduction is also weighed down by an extensive and detailed review of the literature that, while impressive and laudable, produces a disparate set of conceptual references that do not contribute to a definitive answer to the critical question every introduction should address: what is this book about? [End Page 331] But persist, dear reader, beyond the introduction and you will be rewarded with what may be the best ethnography of contemporary Cuba published in recent years. Starting with chapter 1, the author lays out the results of his research, carried out during an extended period of residence on the island as well as during numerous subsequent return trips. Each of the core chapters has a clear focus and addresses in turn the principal concerns that evidently animated the author's research: Cuba's global imagination, the interplay of the national and international, and race and the evolution of national identity. Chapter 1 is on La Yuma and Chapter 2 is on África (purposely denoted in Spanish), both foreign-based constructs that, because of historical processes during the revolution, became part of how Cubans see the world and their own place in it, shaping identity, ideology, and consumption patterns. If those two chapters present fresh approaches to viewing Cuban everyday reality, chapter 3, "Color, Mestizaje, and Belonging in Cuba," travels a much more worn path of scholarship on Cuba with its focus on race and national identity, fluidity of racial categories, and state discourses on race. Nevertheless, it is an excellent treatment of the subject, especially because it is laced, as is most of the book, with revealing anecdotes and transcripts from the investigator's audio recorder, which frame the issues in the respondents' voices and in Ryer's personal encounters in the field. Those boxed passages are invaluable to the narrative and in establishing the author's points. Chapter 4 is the most original section of the book. Entitled "Beyond a Boundary," the chapter is about the "borders of Cubanness," the process by which Cubanness is manifested in the island's diasporas. The largest Cuban diaspora, Cuban Americans, is only the starting point for the chapter, providing the conceptual framework for looking at diasporas formed not by leaving Cuba, as is the case with Cuban Americans, but by going to Cuba during formative years, as was the case with Sudanese, Ghanaian, and other young Africans who studied in Cuba and now live elsewhere. Using concepts from the extensive literature on Cuban Americans, such as the "1.5 generation" construct developed primarily by Gustavo Pérez Firmat and Rubén Rumbaut to look at the experience of youth who were displaced from Cuba to the United States during their adolescent years and became bilingual and bicultural, Ryer examines various groups of African adolescents who experienced displacement to Cuba, resulting in the formation of elements of a Cuban identity that survived the students' residence in the island during those critical developmental years. Nostalgia for Cuba, for example, is one trait shared by both seemingly dissimilar groups: Cuban Americans and Cuban-educated African students. It is a compelling argument for the borderless reach of Cubanness. The book's conclusion is a succinct reflective summary of the book's core arguments, the sort of...

Evolution of political and ideological foundations of Cuban socialism and its reflection in the Constitutions of the country

The paper investigates contemporary political and ideological shifts of Cuban socialism paying specific attention to the period of actualization of Cuban socio-economic model of development implemented since the VI Congress of the Communist party of Cuba. The analysis is based on the different variants of Cuban Constitutions and proposes three historical models of Cuban socialism (Marxist-Leninist, the model of transition and the actualization period model). Comparing the texts of the Constitutions, the study sheds light on several key aspects: the role and functions of the State and the Party, ideological problems of socialism, communism and Marxism, the evolution of the exploitation and oppression concepts, issues of equity and equality, and appeal to the figure of J. Marti. Using historical method, comparative analysis and Marxist theory, as the latter has been the base for the first model of Cuban socialism under investigation, the paper reveals the role of Marxism within the three models. The study uncovers the contradiction between postulating a significant role of Marxism within the actualization model and revision of several core Marxist principles as well as the turn towards national issues in the contemporary Cuban socialism.

The TIC in the Sciences of the Education

The article analyzes the potential offered by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in light of their contributions to Education Sciences. It is based on the advantages in the social appropriation of this technological resource, as well as the axes that must be valued when an impact is intended on the development of a subject in a learning process. The objective is to reflect on the use of computer technologies in the educational teaching process of the contemporary Cuban school, where technologies act as a mediator in the relationship of the student with the group, the teacher and the learning objects. The use of theoretical and empirical research methods, such as the analysis of guiding documents, the systematization of references, bases and theoretical foundations, as well as the historical and logical analysis of the training process with the mediation of ICT, allowed to determine the conceptual nuclei that It is described in the work and the proposal proposed to be developed by the teachers, considering that its impact on education fosters one of the greatest changes in the social sphere. As a result of the research, conclusions are reached where the fundamentals for the use of technologies in the classroom are exposed from a well-organized, planned and controlled process by the teacher.

The Twelfth Man? Some Unlikely Connections Between Manchester City and Revolutionary Cuba

This essay takes two cultural phenomena that are not normally compared, UK football culture and Cuban literary culture, as the foundation for a reflection on the crucial role that mass participation plays in each. ‘The twelfth man’ - a term that usually refers to the home fans that impel a team to victory - is employed here as a metaphor to describe the cognitive, corporeal, affective and moral force of mass physical participation and its impact on the individual, the collective and the institution, be that a global football club or contemporary Cuban society. The essay advocates that paying attention to the dialogic and mutually constitutive relationship between individual, collective and institution, a relationship based simultaneously on identification and differentiation, is key to the harmonization of interests that can underpin the continued effectiveness of any cultural phenomenon, especially in times of rapid change.

Net, Module, Chance

Contemporary Cuban art often highlights the widespread practice of repair. Fixing broken appliances and subdividing houses via DIY construction are frequent real-life responses to economic and social precarity. At the same time, these creative practices constitute political and ethical forms of engagement with crises, inequality, and an uneven access to modernity. I discuss specific objects and practices as a way to explore what repair says about Cuba today, as well as to reflect on how Cuban repair art contributes to a more general understanding of what it means to live in a world at risk.

The greening of Cuba? A case study in religion and permaculture in Santiago

ABSTRACT Using the analysis of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Santiago, this article explores the relationships between religion, ecology, and permaculture in contemporary Cuba. I focus on qualitative interviews with permaculture activists who are affiliated with the Eastern Baptist Convention. These activists are working with an ecumenical center in Santiago that promotes the creation of sustainable local communities through programs dedicated to social service. This article argues that these individuals have embraced a theocentric ecological ethic that combines social and environmental justice. The cultural value of solidaridad (social solidarity), which has long been part of Cuba’s revolutionary history, is shaping the development of this ecological ethic. The value of solidaridad has helped activists establish relational bonds of mutual aid support, particularly in the aftermath of Cuba’s post-Soviet economic crisis.

Parodia, intertextualidad y sátira en la narrativa policial de Lorenzo Lunar Cardedo

Detective fiction as parodic reformulation of genre’s defining patterns has a long history in the Latin American tradition: Borges, Bioy Casares, Soriano, Levrero, Ibargüengoitia, etc. Besides, the evolution of Latin American detective genre has always been characterized by a progressive focalization in the social aspects over the detective story line which has served as a mask to depict in a critical way the flaws of the region’s societies and governments. In nowadays Cuba it could be highlighted the crime narrative of parodic slant by Lorenzo Lunar Cardedo. Among the major features of Lunar Cardedo’s style there are the marginal atmospheres, the stylization of popular speech, the intertextuality, the humor, the parody, and the social criticism. This article focuses on the parodic, intertextual and satiric aspects of his work, particularly discernible in the novel Proyecto en negro (2013), in which the author emphasizes – in opposition to the official discourse – the perpetuation of corrupt, chauvinist, racist, and homophobic behaviors in contemporary Cuba, while relaxing the genre formula limits in order to follow a much more irreverent path within the new Latin American detective fiction.

Staging Discomfort: Performance and Queerness in Contemporary Cuba by Bretton White

Reviewed by: Staging Discomfort: Performance and Queerness in Contemporary Cuba by Bretton White Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes White, Bretton. Staging Discomfort: Performance and Queerness in Contemporary Cuba. Gainesville: U of Florida P, 2020. 258 pp. Queerness is a complex and treacherous topic in Cuba. In Staging Discomfort: Performance and Queerness in Contemporary Cuba, Bretton White focuses on how theater in the Caribbean socialist nation is marked by economic precarity and challenging conditions for audiences and performers. White compellingly analyzes dramatic works in the context of "the Cuban state's project of masculine heteronormativity" (3), focusing on five post-1959 examples that highlight the challenges and tensions related to queerness, cognizant that "queer Cubans have long been targets of state control" (3). As the author states, "The performances studied here concentrate on an aesthetics of fluidity, and thus upset traditional understandings of performer and [End Page 157] spectator, as well as what constitutes the ideal Cuban citizenry" (2), further asking: "How is Cuban theater agile in its critiques considering the state's limitations on expression? How do queer performances allow for new understandings about the effects of the state's failing socialist utopian contract with its citizens? And, can Cuban bodies that come together in queer ways reimagine Cuban citizenship?" (2). In the introduction, White contextualizes post-Soviet life in Cuba, drawing on the work of Jill Lane, Rine Leal, Camilla Stevens, and Norge Espinosa to illuminate Cuban theatre history. In each chapter, White pairs Cuban plays and productions with U.S.-centered queer theorists. Chapter 1 ("Instigating Intimacies: Las relaciones de Clara and Uncomfortable Closeness") focuses on the director Carlos Díaz's creative 2002 staging of a 1999 play by the German playwright Dea Loher, specifically "the blurring of distinctions between audience and actor" (23). White's reading of Díaz's production is informed by Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips's Intimacies. In chapter 2 ("Sharing Shame: Reimagining Entrepreneurship in Baños públicos, S.A."), White focuses on a play by Esther Suárez Durán that received the UNEAC Playwrighting award in Havana in 1998. Dialoguing with Michael Warner, White "shows how a more liquid connection between shame and dignity might allow for the introduction of queerness into dialogues about national identity" (23). Chapter 3 ("Frustrating Futurity: Beauty and Pain in Pájaros de la playa") focuses on a 2004 theatrical adaptation by El Ciervo Encantado of Severo Sarduy's homonymous novel, which focuses on AIDS. White reads the negotiation between suffering and beauty in relation to Lee Edelman's sinthomosexuality theory, which "postulates that reproductive futurity is not representative of possibility, but of restrictive linearity" (24). Chapter 4 ("Vexing Visibilities: Space and Queerness in Chamaco") analyzes a 2005 play by Abel González Melo that was directed by Carlos Celdrán in dialogue with works by José Esteban Muñoz and John Paul Ricco to see "how the play references the characters' cruising of the minor architectural spaces of Central Havana by staging visual nothingness" (24). Finally, in Chapter 5 ("Fronting Failure: Testing Continuity in Perros que jamás ladraron"), White analyzes a 2013 play by Rogelio Orizondo to show how "disabled, queer, black, and female bodies redefine words, images, and legacies of the revolution while courting audience participation" (25), engaging Jack Halberstam's The Queer Art of Failure. White's Staging Discomfort is an elegantly argued, intellectually-stimulating, and necessary read for any scholar interested in the Cuban scene and in theorizations of affect and performance. Its main limitation is its failure to engage the queer of color critique in a more substantive way. [End Page 158] Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes University of Michigan Copyright © 2020 The Center of Latin American Studies

Beyond Cuban Waters. Africa, La Yuma, and the Island’s Global Imagination by Paul Ryer

Reviewed by: Beyond Cuban Waters. Africa, La Yuma, and the Island’s Global Imagination by Paul Ryer Benita Sampedro Vizcaya Ryer, Paul. Beyond Cuban Waters. Africa, La Yuma, and the Island’s Global Imagination. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 2018. 226 pp. Beyond Cuban Waters provides an ethnographically informed study of interactions among ordinary Cubans, foregrounding Cuban ties with the United States and Africa. Paul Ryer’s book, which draws upon fieldwork from the first half of the 1990s, explores these interactions through a number of interrelated notions: La Yuma (a colloquial Cuban term for the United States) and circuits of transnational remittances; Cubans’ relationship with Africa (through the internationalist program), the experiences of African students in Cuba (through the educational program), and its interplay with issues of race and development; and, finally, contemporary Cuban racial categorizations and definitions of the self. In the introduction, “An Antillean Archipelago,” Ryer discloses some of his ethnographic experiences amid a major Cuban economic crisis, referred to as the special period: “I first went to Havana during the rafting crisis of 1994,” he writes (6). The reader learns of the author’s prior experience living in different archipelagic Caribbean settings in his childhood and youth. The introduction also includes a useful mapping of major ethnographic and anthropological approaches to Cuba. [End Page 878] These encompass a variety of traditions, schools of thought, and scholarly contributions, from Fernando Ortiz, to Oscar and Ruth Lewis in the aftermath of the revolution (1969–70), to “clusters of contemporary ethnographic work” on race, gender and sexuality, religious practices, consumption, exile and the Cuban-American experience, and Cuban cultural production. In my view, this lengthy section on the Cuban scholarship corpus is to be read both within the historical frame of larger Caribbean and Atlantic frameworks. Chapter one, “The Rise and Decline of La Yuma,” engages with western material goods and symbols of capitalism, and their role in post-Soviet Cuba, as well as the island’s later entry into the remittance economy and new world order. It considers the appropriation, idealization, and domestication of symbols and goods from the United States (primarily by younger Cubans and African students) and looks ethnographically at Cuba’s distinctively Caribbean socialist parallel economy. Three categories of US cultural products conjured desire in the Cuban imagination of the 1990s: Nike merchandise, the US flag pattern printed onto clothes and other consumer items imported from abroad (typically by visiting relatives or tourists), and the broadcasting of the Oscars and Grammys ceremonies on a non-State-run TV channel. The author is specifically concerned not with La Yuma as a form of resistance, defiance, and domestication through consumerism—although those do play a role—but rather with “the Cubanization of yumanidad.” Moving towards a popular geography of the imagination in everyday life, chapter two, “África in revolutionary Cuba,” focuses on Cuban ideologies of and about the African continent vis-à-vis racial constructions, categorizations, and comparative status. It does so through two points of reference: the experiences of Cuban internationalists in Africa and their relationships and entanglements with Africans, and those of the Africans residing in Cuba (for study or other purposes) and their own relationships with Cubans. Cuban professionals temporarily deployed to Africa (in the fields of health, education, and engineering, among others) typically brought back with them an evolutionist description of Africa marked by ideologies of development and underdevelopment, situating Cubans in a position of relative privilege. For their part, Africans temporarily residing in Cuba (mainly students in the African education program) developed a strong sense of solidarity articulated as a “Pan-Africanism Made in Cuba,” and simultaneously negotiated a position for themselves in Cuban society. They held positions in the parallel market as middlemen or brokers, not just as strategies for a survival economy, but also by shifting their position from underdeveloped origins to one of partnership in a globalized economy, becoming facilitators in the Yuma exchange in the process. “Color, Mestizaje, and Belonging in Cuba,” the title of chapter three, engages with racial dynamics as displayed in daily interactions in contemporary Cuban society, the foreignness of the term “Afro-Cuban” (commonly used in English-language scholarship outside the country but one with little currency...

Updated Deadline: Contemporary Cuban Cinema

Updated Deadline: Contemporary Cuban Cinema

Close-Up Call for Submissions: Contemporary Cuban Cinema

Close-Up Call for Submissions: Contemporary Cuban Cinema

Consumption, Temporality, and Celebration in Contemporary Santiago de Cuba

ABSTRACTIn this article, I argue that the temporal experience of contemporary Cuba must be understood as co‐constituted in both the struggles of daily life and cycles of celebration. As the socialist welfare state has tried to maintain quality of life in post‐Soviet Cuba, the daily work of acquiring basic goods and services has increasingly become a struggle (una lucha). Yet, while everyday life is experienced as a struggle, Cubans are often seen reveling in the joyous experience of celebration at parties or annual festivals. Rather than view these events as spectacular, I argue that they are central to socialist temporality and the lived experiences of the doble moral, a set of shifting values and actions under post‐Soviet Cuban socialism. Analyzing the ways in which Cubans living in Santiago de Cuba experience the celebratory aspect of Carnaval, birthday parties, and La Noche Santiaguera, a weekly street party, I argue that the temporal experiences of anticipation, inversion, and rejuvenation juxtaposed with the quotidian experiences of the struggle (la lucha) are central to the lived experiences of Cubanidad and socialism in Cuba today. [festivals, temporality, consumption, Caribbean, Cuba]

Practices of double currency: value and politics in rural Cuba

Ethnographies of contemporary Cuba often employ the concept of “struggle” to describe everyday economic action. This concept, however, lacks the edge to analyze social contests around value and the resulting structural differentiation of the social field. Inspired by anthropological debates on value and fieldwork observations in rural western Cuba, this paper begins to explore the social life of Cuba’s monetary plurality. I reconstruct and interpret some of the major features of the Cuban monetary landscape, namely, the existence of two main national currencies and exchange rates, different institutional rules for accountancy, and the awkward intimacy with the US dollar. The analysis of the national monetary system reveals the contrapuntal and historically contingent formation of an architecture of value based on a sphere of contained reproduction and a sphere of external reconnection. Additionally, paying attention to the money medium leads me to notice the politics involved in negotiating a dimension of incalculability interwoven in the functioning of the economy at large. The analysis of individuals’ and state actors’ everyday economic practices in this context provides a favorable vantage point from which to consider how particular economic operations take part into broader processes of accumulation and loss of value.

Alegres, libres y ruidosas: el espacio de lo soez y la trampa

Esta investigación busca dar cuenta de los espacios que habitan los personajes del cuento Alegres, libres y ruidosas (2015) de Pedro Juan Gutiérrez. Mediante los detalles que nos entrega el narrador, revisaremos los “operadores tonales”, estableciendo los enunciados descriptivos y los detalles inherentes a ellos, en cuanto a la composición de los personajes, así como el tipo de espacio en que se realizan, construyendo una identidad transgresora bajo la perspectiva de la poética de lo soez. En este sentido, los personajes serán “máquinas deseantes” que irrumpen en la realidad con un flujo sistemático de líquidos descompuestos (esperma) que arrastran residuos políticos, éticos y estéticos presentes en la Cuba contemporánea. Así, podríamos hablar de un sexo eminentemente político que no se presenta denotativamente en el cuento sino en las metáforas construidas por aquellos operadores que fijan el “tono” del relato (desenfadado, soez, libertario). Por último, postulamos que los detalles funcionan como “pistas” de una historia secreta (la historia de una trampa) que funciona bajo la historia visible que se narra en el cuento.

El lobo, el bosque y el hombre nuevo: escrituras del yo al fin de la Utopía

El relato “El lobo, el bosque y el hombre nuevo” (Premio Juan Rulfo 1990), de Senel Paz, es una piedra angular en las letras cubanas contemporáneas. La crítica lo considera el comienzo de la literatura del periodo especial en la isla. El cuento aborda la relación entre dos sujetos aparentemente irreconciliables: el joven comunista David y el homosexual y religioso Diego. El vínculo de los personajes y sus conflictos ponen de relieve las contradicciones de la sociedad cubana socialista previa a la crisis de 1990. En este artículo se aborda la conformación del yo ficcional en el relato y cómo la inminente crisis del periodo especial modeló esa construcción.

Curating in Cuba: From Advertisement Websites to Night Spaces

“Curating in Cuba: from Advertisement Websites to Night Spaces” proposes that newly established socio-commercial spaces in Cuba are more appropriate to exhibit projects of contemporary art than traditional state-owned galleries and museums. It analyses two exhibitions which took place at heterogeneous sites — Handmade Twitting (Revolico, Twelfth Havana Biennial, 2015) and Portate Bien. De lo erotico y de lo heroico: sexo y resistencia cultural (Fabrica de Arte Cubano, 2016)—by tracing how they responded to current changes in Cuba’s economic and sociopolitical landscape, and by exposing how they rethink and upset conventional ways of exhibition making. Handmade Twitting was a virtual exhibition that explored how historically opposing economic and value systems are increasingly merging in contemporary Cuba. It took place at the online auction and shopping website Revolico and was made available to the Cuban audience through the distribution of the paquete semanal: a selection of digital information distributed on Cuba’s black market. Portate bien was a nocturnal exhibition about the revolutionary potentials of sexuality which was held at the Fabrica de Arte Cubano: a fusion of a discotheque, a commercial gallery and an art space.