Culture and ideology

Helen Yaffe recommends a wide-ranging collection of essays linking culture to Cuban identity

This book is a collection of essays by anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and literary, film and art scholars who examine developments within distinct cultural fields, linking them to the question of Cuban identity in the 1990s era of economic crisis and globalisation. Those readers, who, like me, lived in Cuba during the austere Special Period, will find echoes of their own experiences. However, those who have never even visited the island will also discover a great deal in the rich details of these essays.

In the mid-1990s, I shared blackouts, bus queues and near-empty food markets with Cubans, hitched on the back of trucks and debated the significance of new legislation and economic reforms, joined defiant mobilisations on May Day and, later, for the return of Elian Gonzalez. This compilation does not, however, address the popular experience of the Special Period or relate to the broader demographic and political categories into which Cuban society is often divided: the masses, the people, the workers, the farmers, the youth, and so on. Rather it reveals how different microcosms of Cuban society were challenged and changed during this period - writers, filmmakers, santeros, actors, Cuban-Russians, rappers, musicians and artists. This specificity is the book's strength - in providing rich detail - but for those who lack an overview it could also be its weakness - abstracted from the bigger picture.

The collapse of the Socialist bloc left Cuba isolated while new legislation intensified the US blockade. To the astonishment of most commentators, in particular its ideological enemies, the Cuban Revolution survived. The costs of survival included legalisation of the dollar, the development of the tourist industry and opening up to foreign interests. The impact of such measures is omnipresent in this anthology, particularly the issue of sexual and business relationships with foreigners, emigration, remittances and the struggle for ownership of Cubanidad, Cuban identity, and whether physical presence on the island and/or support for the Revolution was an integral part of ownership of that identity. The issues of race and class are other fascinating recurring themes.

For example, Esther Whitfield discusses how the implosion of domestic publishing with the economic crisis and the opening up of competitive foreign markets introduced the tension between "true literature" and "literary tourism" (p23) for voyeuristic foreign consumers. Kevin Delgado examines the commodification of Santería traditions and "the specific ways some Cubans convert spiritual and cultural capital into financial capital, as well as the impact of this financial exchange upon the practice of Santería itself" (p52).

Most people who travel back and forth to Cuba will relate to Lisa Maya Knauer's narrative about the "audiovisual remittances" she carried between rumberos in New York, and Havana and Matanzas - between islanders and emigrés. This involved photographing and filming performances, parties or domestic life and recording messages for ex-colleagues and families on the other side. In this process the message handler has an active role in decoding the reality behind images and words. In other chapters, the interpretative narrative of the art critic takes over, especially that written by (Cuban) Antonio Eligio Fernandez about Cuban art.

Of particular note is (Cuban) Roberto Zurbano's chapter on the development of the hip hop movement in Cuba. By writing as a protagonist in this process, that is, from "within" the Revolution, Zurbano's narrative avoids the tendency to abstraction or political cynicism which creeps into some chapters. Such a tone is most explicit from the editor Ariana Hernandez-Reguant who, in the introduction, describes the Special Period as one in which "foreign scholars… struggled to understand and write about an experience that they could never fully own" (p13).

For Hernandez-Reguant, the state's retreat and legislative opening to market forces fostered "Havana's new showbiz elite" (p6), with artists and artisans among those who "got richer" by being "plugged into transnational economic networks" while others "got poorer" (p5). In other words, Cuban culture blossomed when it became dependent on foreign interests which commodified it, not when government provided free resources and training and paid artists salaries. Recognising that small groups benefited, she equates this with an "emerging public sphere" (p7), thus sharing some of premises of the Cubanologist paradigm about what constitutes "civil society" (p9). She regrets that just when those policies were yielding results, "the government rolled them back" (p6).

Stating that the Cuban Revolution had previously "shunned" (p5) international trade networks, as if the US blockade did not exist, Hernandez-Reguant repeats that in the Special Period "the state was forced to withdraw from everyday economic activity, leaving the population to fend for itself" (p2). This observation is contradicted by the acknowledgment that the state carried out "door-to-door inspections of household appliances in order to issue individually tailored saving measures" (p4), rebuilt hotels and small airports near the beaches and continued to provide all Cubans with the (reduced) ration or food basket, healthcare and education. The latter may well be "little more than basic social rights" (p8) but to their provision was dedicated an increasing proportion of the state's economic resources despite the crisis.

Other omissions that evince a certain historical lacuna appear in Hernandez-Reguant's chapter on Multicubanidad. The discussion about Afro-Cubanidad refers to the sense of African ancestry (p80-81) but does not mention the role of Cuban military, medical and civilian volunteers throughout Africa, including the 300,000 Cubans who fought in Angola against the apartheid South African forces for many years. The intervention and victory in Angola strengthened the physical and spiritual bonds between Cubans and Africans. The chapter also concludes with the 2003 arrest of "dissident poets, journalists, and activists" (p85) without mention of the well-attested evidence that they were paid by US government institutions and other external right-wing opposition groups.

Despite these reservations, most of the essays in this volume are sensitive and well observed. This a fascinating book, enlightening both for academics and for others interested in Cuba from many perspectives.

Helen Yaffe is a postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at University College London and author of Ernesto Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution published by Palgrave MacMillan, 2009. Email Helen.Yaffe@sas.ac.uk