Metaphor and the imperial ethos

Antoni Kapcia recommends an eloquent and richly illustrated argument on the evolution of US attitudes to Cuba.

Cuba in the American Imagination. Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos
Louis A. Pérez, Jr.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008
345 pages

Lou Pérez has never disappointed with his many studies of Cuba, and this new book is no exception to that rule. It bears all the hallmarks of his style: rigour of argument, eloquence of argumentation, a memorable turn of phrase, a wealth of detail, example and illustration (the latter, literally, in delightful abundance) and a forceful case being proven. Indeed, Perez deals with his material like a good lawyer: rather than being satisfied with a minimalist argument, he piles on the evidence with example after example until the case is proven by sheer weight. The result is invariably, as here, an eminently readable book but also one that says something significant.

In this instance Pérez's argument is simple: that Cuba has always occupied a special place in the US imaginary, including (most importantly) in its self-representation. He argues that 1898 was both the culmination of a long 'pre-history' of coveting and the moment which shaped subsequent imperialist thinking. Already familiar with the history of US designs on Cuba, we tend (rightly) to explain it through Cuba's strategic significance for a new (and later Canal-obsessed) United States, the development of 'Manifest Destiny' and then imperialist thinking - and finally a growing fear of Communism. However, here Pérez treats us to a detailed exposition of the role of metaphor in that imaginary and what he calls "the capacity of self-representation to disguise self-interest" (p. 176). Hence, after a useful if challenging explanation of the mechanisms of metaphor, he gives us a rich history of those different and changing metaphors culled from a wide range of sources: political discourse, the press, travelogues and, most revealingly, the plethora of cartoons which embellish the book.

The metaphors which he identifies and illustrates are many and fascinating. He starts with the notion of Cuba's proximity to the US shores, a metaphor which, he shows, shaped a providential justification of the idea of involvement in Cuban affairs and a growing proprietary attitude; this was then followed by the long-standing metaphor as Cuba as the ripe fruit, ready to fall naturally into US hands. The result of both - since, he argues convincingly, such metaphors not only reflected the evolving US thinking but also helped to shape it - was a consistent opposition to the idea of an independent Cuba, a posture which was actively pursued in 1810-26 and which then helped create the Monroe Doctrine, but which remained active up to the regimes of both Cleveland and McKinley, by then driven by a growing lack of faith in the inherent ability of Cubans themselves.

The 1895-8 Cuban rebellion suspended that lack of faith, creating a new set of metaphors to justify intervention: Cuba as victim of Spanish cruelty, as Armenia, as a starving people, and the United State as the Good Samaritan. The most powerful metaphor, however, was the representation of Cuba as a female - always white, beautiful and suffering (exemplified by the curious case of the imprisonment of, campaign for and eventual US press-assisted escape of Evangelina Cossío Cisneros). Besides implying rape and abuse by a villainous Spain, this also allowed a sense of US chivalry to emerge. Pérez curiously, but perhaps rightly, (given that others have catalogued that period often and in detail) largely ignores the detail of the occupation itself). After 1898, however, the reality of a black Cuba shocked US politicians, soldiers and press into a new set of metaphors characterised by an overt racism: the beautiful white damsel became the dirty unruly Black. Moreover, as Pérez shows in what is perhaps the most interesting chapter (with its mix of over 50 cartoons and a memorable prose), that this metaphor soon, after 1901, became translated into that of a child (usually black) whose protection was rightly guaranteed by its guardian, the United States. This all fed into the campaign over the Platt Amendment, presented at the time as protecting Cubans against themselves until they should be mature enough for self-rule; the 1906 rebellion was therefore the act of a rebellious child, to be chided and set right by its guardian.

Pérez then goes on to show the development of a whole narrative of 1898 (as the US liberation of Cuba), including 'official' Cuba's complicity in the regular and monumental commemoration of the Maine, but also shows how the emergence of a growing Cuban resentment of that narrative - strengthened by a new historical revisionism to parallel the reawakening of nationalism from the 1920s - shocked and bewildered Americans who simply could not understand that, while they 'remembered 1898 as something done for Cubans, the Cubans remembered 1898 as something done to them' (p. 219). The implication is clear: this incomprehension, and the underlying anger at Cuban ingratitude, eventually fed into US reactions to the 1959 revolution, where the old metaphors of the child or the irresponsible adolescent reappeared, embodied in Fidel Castro.

What the whole book therefore gives us is ample evidence for the evolution of a significant set of US attitudes to Cuba which, beyond the cold-eyed calculations of policymakers, shaped both formal and informal approaches to 'the Cuba problem'. In a real sense, it is the counterpart to Pérez's previous masterpiece on Cuban attitudes to the United States in the nineteenth century; taken together they give us an eloquent picture of the mutual incomprehension shaping one of the most contradictory relationships in the Americas.

Antoni Kapcia is Professor in Hispanic and Latin American Studies and Director of the Centre for Research on Cuba at the University of Nottingham, UK A review of his latest book Cuba in Revolution. A History since the Fifties (London, Reaktion Books, 2008) appeared in the previous issue of IJSC.

Copyright for this work is held jointly between Antoni Kapcia and the International Journal of Cuban Studies under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative 3.0 Licence
IJCS Volume 2 Issue 1 June 2009