The International Journal of Cuban Studies
(Online) ISSN 1756-347X
Whose America?
Co-editor Jean Stubbs highlights the big questions raised by the authors in our second issue.
In this, our second issue of the International Journal of Cuban Studies, we continue to pursue our prime challenge as outlined in my editorial for the launch June issue, which is that: "in the current highly polarised US-Cuba world of politics and scholarship, our UK-based journal realise its potential to broaden out the debate on and in Cuba, bringing new insights by contributors from Cuba and across the world, and from all disciplines, especially those beyond the humanities and the social sciences."
Just six months on from that first issue, we have witnessed what many in the UK and Europe see as a veritable meltdown of the US unipolar neoliberal model of global capital, which rose to ascendancy after the fall of the Eastern European socialist bloc almost two decades ago. This has serious implications for the UK, closely aligned as it has been to the US model, but also for Europe and the rest of the world, Cuba included. Thus far, US and UK government financial intervention in the market to get globalisation back on track has proved ineffectual, and it remains to be seen what will transpire in the New Year, when newly elected US President Obama enters the White House.
In this context, it is opportune that we welcome our new co-editor George Lambie, who contributes an editorial articulating the 'meltdown' view of globalisation and suggesting that, while by no means certain Cuba can overcome its many problems (greatly exacerbated by the onslaught of recent hurricanes), the case is bolstered for revisiting the alternatives Cuba embodies.
Following on from the 'Cuba' chapter in Churchill's memoirs that was our 'classic article' in the first issue, we took the decision to include in this second issue the Cuban classic Our America. Written by José Martí, the 19th century founding father of Cuban independence, it was published in 1891, four years before Churchill was sent to Cuba as a young soldier. That momentous year of 1895 saw the outbreak of Cuba's final War of Independence against Spain, simultaneous with fighting in Spain's other two last remaining colonies of Puerto Rico and the Philippines. The culmination was US military occupation of all three in 1898, marking the end of the Spanish Empire and the start of the US 'American century'.
A prolific writer as well as civic leader, Martí was visionary, calling for the Americas to the south to realise their own worth and come together to counter the growing might of the US north. While a product of his times in many of his turns of phrase which might jar today, his writing has both eloquence and contemporary resonance:
"The trees must form ranks to keep the giant with seven-league boots from passing!"... We were a masquerader in English breeches, Parisian vest, North America jacket and Spanish cap… [but now] Nations stand up and greet one another. 'What are we?' is the mutual question and little by little they furnish answers... The frockcoats are still French but thought begins to be American."
Most signficantly, he wrote:
"… perhaps our America is running another risk that does not come from itself but from the difference in origins, methods, and interests between the two halves of the continent, and the time is near at hand when an enterprising and vigorous people who scorn and ignore our America will even so approach it and demand a close relationship. The scorn of our formidable neighbor who does not know us is our America's greatest danger."
Martí had great faith in humanity, and - interestingly, in the context of the recent US presidential election - he was ahead of his times in arguing not only for an end to racial differences, but also seeing humanity as indivisible:
"One must have faith in the best in men and distrust the worst… There can be no racial animosity, because there are no races. The soul, equal and eternal, emanates from bodies of different shapes and colors. Whoever foments and spreads antagonism and hate between the races, sins against humanity."
A different discourse?
At the time of writing Our America, Marti had long been exiled from Cuba for his involvement in the first War of Independence of 1868-78, and was based primarily in the United States. To paraphrase another famous quote of his, he lived in the belly of the monster and knew it well, and his was the sling of David against Goliath. It was in the United States that he organised the Cuban Revolutionary Party, with support from exile communities, to relaunch Cuba's independence struggle. He returned to Cuba to fight, in 1895, only to be killed two days later in battle. He was not to live to see the worst of his fears regarding US expansionism materialise, not least as regards Cuba, which he had always highlighted as occupying a unique geographic and strategic positioning with respect to US hemispheric designs.
Fortuitously, three articles submitted for this issue of the Journal link well with our choice of classic paper. The first is by Cuban historian Rodolfo Sarracino, writing on Martí and US expansionism in the late 19th century. He argues that the nuances in Martí's writing have to be seen in the context of the vulnerability of his condition as an immigrant in the United States. Albeit protected in the early 1890s by his appointment as consul for several Latin American countries and his recognition among influential figures of the time, he might easily have been targetted for his activism in organising the Cuban independence effort in opposition to the rise of US expansionism, as articulated by Alfred Thayer Mahan, among others. Sarracino's hypothesis is that this helps explain the moderation in much of Martí's work.
The relevance of Martí's thinking a century later is developed in the two articles that follow. The first is by British scholar Ken Cole, who writes on the current Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas and the Caribbean (ALBA), spearheaded by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Cole views ALBA, above all, as a process of political awareness (concientización), inspired by the great thinkers of "Our America" - Simón Bolívar at the turn of the 18th century, as mainland Central and South American Spanish colonies gained their freedom from Spain; Martí himself at the turn of the 19th century, as the last island colonies of Spain fought for their freedom; and revolutionary Cuba's Fidel Castro. The second article, by Canadian Jessica Vorstermans, argues the parallels between US foreign policy discourse on Cuba over the past half century and more recently on Venezuela. Both are seen by the US government as a threat to regional stability, democracy and the free market economy, with the US recycling both discourse and policy, branding Venezuela as the new "terrorism hub" of South America, and Chávez as the new Castro.
The tenor of the last article in this section changes, as Tim Anderson, writing from Australia, examines capacity-building in what is the largest health aid programme in the Asia-Pacific region, that of Cuba-Timor Leste.It is one from which he argues development partners and health professionals stand to learn a lot in terms of training ethos and commitment. Among the questions he raises are the reflection the programme calls for in terms of how we conceive health aid and the challenges Timor Leste faces in organising and retaining its hundreds of new health professionals.
The science section also highlights the importance of collaborative work. We feature a report on new multi-disciplinary research on neural network modelling on the purity of molasses in Cuban sugar, undertaken by Cubans Osvaldo Gozá León, J. Hormaza, Yatali Montero-Sanchez Rojas and R. Santana, along with British-based Hassan Kazemian. The implications of this relate to improving Cuba's sugar industry profitability. In order to assess the purity of molasses, a benchmark is necessary, not only for sugar factories but also for ethanol distilleries, which generally takes the form of a 'target purity equation'. Many of these still have their limitations, which the artificial neural networks technique can overcome.
Independence and innovation
The arts section in this issue features three articles. One is by British librarian John Pateman, who, when carrying out his own research in public libraries in Cuban, was pleasantly suprised to find how readily available is the work of the politically controversial British writer George Orwell, as well as allegedly banned Cuban authors such as Reinaldo Arenas. In that context, he evaluates Cuban libraries, as well as bookshops selling books at affordable prices, and takes a closer look at the alleged independence of Cuba's self-styled "independent libraries". The other two articles are by Cuban authors. The first, by Grethell Morell Otero, assesses Cuban photodocumentalism of the period 1970-1984, arguing that the formal constraints of realism should not lead to dismissing the body of work in artistic terms, because what was seen, and even more so what wasn't, formed the bedrock on which later innovative techique was to develop. The second by Alicia Valdés Cantero, on the little-known involvement of women in Cuban musicology and their unique contribution to new methods and new lines of research in this field. Her focus is on the growing presence of women since 1959, and especially the late 1970s, with the creation of the Higher Institute of Arts (ISA, 1976) and Cuban Music Research and Development Centre (CIDMUC, 1978), and the last five years, with the Open Multi-thematic Musicology Workshop (TMMA). Accompanying each of these two articles, and a feature new to the Journal, is a photographic gallery.
The first two reviews in this issue are on dance and film. Ted Henken writes on the moving autobiography of famed Cuban ballet dancer Carlos Acosta, who is currently with Britain's Royal Ballet and whose poignant journey from poverty and obscurity on the outskirts of revolutionary Havana to wealth and world fame is a reflective coming-of-age story encapsulated in its title, No Way Home. Dolores Tierney assesses the special issue of the Spanish film journal Archivos de la filmoteca on half a century of Cuban cinema. Titled 'Cuban cinema and revolution: lights and shadows', the issue includes twelve articles by French, Cuban, Cuban-Spanish, Spanish, British and US authors on Cuban cinematic history, theory, documentary, filmmaking at the margins, and contemporary young filmmakers.
The second two reviews span a century of Cuban history and contemporary society. Steve Cushion examines Cuban historian Jorge Renato Ibarra's award-winning book on the little-known Anglo-Cuban Treaty of 1905, subtitled the US against Europe. Ibarra examines the US challenge to British commercial interests in Cuba, which in this case comes to a head over Cuba's imports of rice from British India, and the subsequent decline of British interests in both Cuba and Latin America. Finally, Geraldine Lievesley reviews British historian Antoni Kapcia's new book, which argues that one of the post-1959 Cuban state's greatest assets has been its adaptability to changing circumstances, while maintaining a commitment to social progress and egalitarianism. Kapcia argues that one third of the Cuban people have remained 'loyal activists', another third have been 'passive loyalists', and the remainder have ranged from the passive disaffected to those seeking to leave the country. This was the context in which the 1990s crisis did not bring down the government or Castro; and, it is inferred, the Cuban state will continue to develop and deepen its dialogue with Cuban civil society, as well as promoting regional initiatives such as ALBA and South-South international collaboration.
All our authors leave us with big questions. Is the 21st century already witnessing the eclipse of the US unipolar world and, if so, how will the US respond? Is Our America now on the ascendancy? Can ALBA mount a lasting alternative? Can Cuba provide lessons for the world in areas such as science and culture? Most importantly of all, can Cuba rise above the politico-cultural, socio-economic and, now, climatic challenges it faces? We look forward to future articles that tackle such questions head-on in subsequent issues of the journal.
Jean Stubbs is Professor of Caribbean Studies at London Metropolitan University and founding director of the Caribbean Studies Centre.
Copyright
Copyright for this work is held jointly between Jean Stubbs and the International Journal of Cuban Studies under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative 3.0 Licence
IJCS Volume 1 Issue 2 December 2008
