Copyright by Enrique Jose Gonzalez-Conty 2014 The Dissertation Committee for Enrique Jose Gonzalez-Conty certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Archiving the Revolution: Claiming History in Cuban Literature and Film Committee: Cesar A. Salgado, Supervisor Jossianna Arroyo Martinez Jason R. Borge Enrique H. Fierro Charles Ramirez-Berg Alan West-Duran Archiving the Revolution: Claiming History in Cuban Literature and Film by Enrique Jose Gonzalez-Conty, B.S.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2014 Dedication To my family, for all their unconditional love and immeasurable support. Acknowledgements This dissertation was made possible thanks to the intellectual guidance of César A. Salgado, my supervisor. I will be forever in debt to him, especially for his acute observations and comments on my work. Without him, this project would not have been possible. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee: Jossianna Arroyo-Martínez, Jason R. Borge, Enrique H. Fierro, Charles Ramirez-Berg, and Alan West-Durán for reading my work in-depth and for their suggestions on how it could improve. I was lucky to have committee members with diverse research interests whose expertise helped improve my manuscript. The funding provided for my research was also crucial. I would like to thank the Department of Spanish and Portuguese for the Professional Development Awards and a Summer Research Grant that enabled me to present my research at national and international conferences for valuable feedback as well as consult libraries in the United States and abroad. The Tinker Summer Field Research Grant from the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) was also instrumental in this regard. I am also deeply grateful to Ithaca College, where the Pre-Doctoral Diversity Fellowship provided the support to complete this dissertation in a timely fashion. My colleagues at IC also organized different opportunities to present my work, all of which proved to be enriching experiences. I would also like to thank the staff at Casa de las Américas and the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) for all their help and support. During my stay in 2011, Regla Elvira Portes Ibarra at Casa’s Library and Ángel González Abreu at Casa’s Hemeroteca provided me with all the primary and secondary sources I needed to complete my research. At ICAIC, my special thanks go to Dananir Ávila, Director of ICAIC’s Archivo v Fílmico who made everything possible so that I could gain access to Rebeca Chávez’s complete filmography. I am also grateful for the help provided by Maité Hernández- Lorenzo and Víctor Fowler. Both of them shared with me contacts that were critical to conduct further research in Cuba. In Santiago de Cuba, the staff at the Elvira Cape’s Library familiarized me with José Soler Puig’s bibliography. Special thanks go to librarian Olga Orúe at Cape’s Hemeroteca. Her thorough knowledge of Soler’s work helped me immensely. I would also like to thank filmmakers Rebeca Chávez and Miguel Coyula who were kind enough to allow me to interview them during my trip. Their insights helped me better contextualize my chapters on their films. Additionally, in the U.S., many thanks go to the librarians in the Benson Latin American Collection at UT for all their help. Moreover, I would like to thank all my friends in Austin, including Juan Carlos López, Lorna and Marla Torrado, Joel Maysonet, Beliza Torres, Francis Watlington, Alexandre Lima, Janice López, Paula Park, Amy Olen, Sean Manning, Sam Gorman, Ingrid Robyn, Omar Vargas, José Enrique Navarro, Rocío del Águila, Alejandra and Giulianna Zambrano, Jorge García, Tania Camacho, Rodrigo Lopes de Barros, Silvia Lorenso, René Carrasco, Ignacio Carvajal, Lee Jackson, Lanie Millar, and Francisco Maldonado, for their friendship and camaraderie. Another friend who deserves my gratitude is our Graduate Coordinator, Laura Rodríguez, for all her help over the years. Finally, although they were far away from Austin, I want to thank my family for their support as I worked to finish this project. You are all responsible for my success in completing my doctoral degree. Desde aquí les doy las gracias. I would also like to thank my in-laws for their moral and “gastronomical” support during the last stages of the writing process. Mil gracias a ustedes también. vi Last but not least, I would like to thank my wife for her companionship during what then seemed to be a never-ending project. Her love and understanding helped me endure this difficult journey and kept me going to the end. Gracias mi amor por todo, desde lo más profundo de mí. vii Archiving the Revolution: Claiming History in Cuban Literature and Film Enrique Jose Gonzalez-Conty, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2014 Supervisor: Cesar A. Salgado This dissertation examines how both literature and film were responsible for the construction of the Cuban Revolutionary Archive. On one hand, the immediate foundation of the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) three months after the triumph of Fidel Castro’s 26 of July guerrilla movement in 1959, showed the urgency to establish a cinematic apparatus that would support the Cuban Revolution itself, that is, the need to project what had just happened to the outside world. On the other, literature also emerged as an important artifact of the Cuban Revolutionary Archive with the support of the literary prizes granted by Casa de las Américas! another key cultural institution founded in those first years. Most of the first films– such as Historias de la Revolución (1960)– and novels– such as Maestra voluntaria (1962)– produced then were either about the Cuban struggle or served to record the main events and accomplishments of the post- 1959 revolutionary process. That is why I considered them as historical records instituted and manipulated by the Cuban government. I also analyze the films and novels published outside the island as a “counter-archive” that contests the official version. My goal in writing this dissertation, then, was not only to trace how this Cuban Revolutionary Filmic and Literary Archive was constructed but also how it has evolved throughout the years. To do so I analyze primary works from the sixties- such as the film viii P.M. (1960) and Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) and the novel Bertillón 166 (1960)– to contrast them with works produced thirty to fifty years later that revisit those first years– such as the films 8-A (1992), City in Red (2009) and Memories of Overdevelopment (2010). The aim is to decipher why these two mediums were used as artifacts of the archive, what was hidden or erased, how did the archive of the sixties differ from the one that emerged after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and during the “Special Period,” and what challenges arose with the passage of time and the decadence of the revolutionary process. By looking for answers to these questions, this dissertation aims to contribute to the recent revision by cultural scholars of Latin American Revolutions in their anniversaries. ix Table of Contents List of Figures....................................................................................................... xii! Introduction: Constructing and Contesting the Filmic Archive of the Cuban Revolution.......................................................................................................1! Antecedents: Literature, Film, and Archives in the Mexican and Russian Revolutions ............................................................................................3! Theories of the Archive ................................................................................10! Film Culture in Pre-Revolutionary Cuba......................................................14! ICAIC’s Archive in Post-1959 Cuba ............................................................16! The Place of Docudrama in the Revolution’s Filmic Archive......................22! Memory Wars: Dissident Cuban Cinema at Home and Abroad..................24! Chapter Divisions..........................................................................................29! Chapter 1: The Institutionalization of Cuban Literature and Film ........................34! Introduction: From Birth to Their Fifty-Year Anniversary in Casa de las Américas and ICAIC............................................................................34! The 50th Anniversary of the ICAIC .............................................................36! Rebeca Chávez’s Film City in Red: A Half Century Celebration of the ICAIC ..............................................................................................................37 The Cuban Revolutionary Archive Built by Casa de las Américas..............55! José Soler Puig: The “Ideal” Revolutionary Writer......................................55! Bertillón 166: The Founding Novel of the Revolution.................................61! Chapter 2: Challenging the Cuban Revolutionary Archive from Within ..............68! Introduction: Edmundo Desnoes and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea .......................68! Edmundo Desnoes’s Earlier Career..............................................................69! Desnoes’s First Novels of the Revolution ....................................................77! Tomás Gutiérrez Alea: Filmmaker and Theorist ..........................................95!