In Contemporary Cuba

ARTS & CULTURE in Contemporary Cuba UTUR F E Presented at the International Symposium A S CUBA FUTURES: PAST AND PRESENT B March 31- April 2, 2011 U T C N The Cuba Project E BildnerS Center for Western Hemisphere Studies P E The Graduate Center, CUNY R A S P T A N D Arts and Culture.book Page i Friday, July 29, 2011 5:47 PM CUBA FUTURES: ARTS AND CULTURE IN CONTEMPORARY CUBA Edited by M. Font Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies Arts and Culture.book Page ii Friday, July 29, 2011 5:47 PM Presented at the international symposium “Cuba Futures: Past and Present,” organized by the The Cuba Project Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies The Graduate Center/CUNY, March 31–April 2, 2011 Arts and Culture.book Page i Friday, July 29, 2011 5:47 PM CUBA FUTURES: ARTS AND CULTURE IN CONTEMPORARY CUBA Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies www.cubasymposium.org www.bildner.org Arts and Culture.book Page iii Friday, July 29, 2011 5:47 PM Table of Contents Preface v Literature and Intellectuals Envisioning a New Cuba: Sotero Figueroa, José Martí, and the Idea of Cuba Libre Kyle Doherty 1 Fantoches 1926: Novela Policíaca del grupo minorista Ana María Hernández 37 Arenas: ‘Visible Invisibility’ in Exile María Encarnación López 73 The First Generatiopn of Intellectuals of the Cuban Republic: The Figure of José Antonio Ramos (1885-1946) Judith A. Weiss 85 Death, Socialism, and the Death OF Socialism in El hombre que amaba a los perros (Leonardo Padura Fuentess, 2010) Stephen Wilkinson 101 La Habana, ciudad del desencanto en la narrativa de Padura Fuentes Paula García Talaván 117 Negotiating Borders of Identity in the Fiction of José Manuel Prieto Britton W. Newman 153 iii Arts and Culture.book Page iv Friday, July 29, 2011 5:47 PM iv Theater and Performance La escena cubana del transmilenio: diálogos con el contexto y visiones del mañana Esther Suárez Durán 181 El teatro nacional de Cuba (1959-1961): Entre la aspiración y la posibilidad Miguel Sánchez León 205 A Cecilia Valdés for the Twenty-First Century: Polemical Poossession in Norge Espinosa's “La virgencita de bronce” David Lisenby 221 Art Guy Pérez Cisneros versus José Gómez Sicre: “Lo cubano en las artes plásticas” Alejandro Anreus 233 La Generación de cierta esperanza versus la Generación de la esperanza cierta: Una mirada historiográfica a la plástica cubana contemporánea Ana María Socarrás Piñón 245 Film Cuban Ethnicities in Cinematic Context, 1930s-1950s Raúl Rubio 261 Silbar en Madagasacar: El arte de mostrar ocultando Alfredo Antonio Fernandez 283 Arts and Culture.book Page v Friday, July 29, 2011 5:47 PM Preface The dynamics of contemporary Cuba—the politics, culture, economy, and the people—were the focus of the three-day international symposium, Cuba Futures: Past and Present (organized by the Bildner Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY). As one of the largest and most dynamic conferences on Cuba to date, the Cuba Futures symposium drew the attention of specialists from all parts of the world. Nearly 600 individuals attended the 57 panels and plenary sessions over the course of three days. Over 240 panelists from the US, Cuba, Britain, Spain, Germany, France, Canada, and other countries combined perspectives from various fields including social sciences, economics, arts and humanities. They provided in- depth treatment of a wide range of topics, including US-Cuba relations, healthcare, the history and legacy of the Cuban revolution, the increasingly complex Cuban diasporas, cinema, music, literature, and cultural institutions, the visual and performing arts, religion, the role of intellectuals, urban spaces, civil society, democracy, the impact of the Internet and technology, social development, non-governmental organizations, Afro-Cuban cultural movements, gender and sexuality, tourism, and race and ethnicity. The conference also discussed Cuba’s links to the rest of the world. The conference was organized by Bildner Center director Mauricio A. Font and the Cuba Futures organizing committee, consisting of a growing number of Cuba specialists at the City University of New York, with support from the Bildner Center staff. Since 1997, The Cuba Project has been organizing related conferences creating a space for sustained dialogue on contemporary issues of Cuban society. The papers in this volume were v Arts and Culture.book Page vi Friday, July 29, 2011 5:47 PM vi presented during the Cuba Futures conference and focus on literature and the arts in contmeporary Cuba. Arts and Culture.book Page 1 Friday, July 29, 2011 5:47 PM 1 Envisioning a New Cuba: Sotero Figueroa, José Martí, and the Idea of Cuba Libre Kyle Doherty Introduction Though relatively obscure compared to other prominent independence activists from the Hispanophone Caribbean, Sotero Figueroa played a crucial role in the struggle against Spain by disseminating essays, poems, and other printed materials in support of independence for Cuba and Puerto Rico. Though Puerto Rican by birth, Figueroa joined countryman Eugenio María de Hostos in espousing the unity of “las dos Antillas,” equating Cuba’s struggle for independence with that of Puerto Rico. In a somewhat fatalistic verse appearing in an 1891 issue of “La Revista Ilustrada de Nueva York,” Figueroa wrote, “Cuba y Puerto Rico, en Guerra, con tutelas / fomentidas, que si están en dos partidas / son una en aspiraciones, / y van en sus aflic- ciones / a un mismo dogal unidas” (Quoted in Figueroa, La verdad de la historia, 1977: 6). Living amongst New York’s Cuban émigré community in the late-nineteenth century, Figueroa met José Martí, 1 Arts and Culture.book Page 2 Friday, July 29, 2011 5:47 PM 2 Chapter 1 founder of the Partido Revolucionario Cubano and patron saint of the independence movement. They became close friends and associates as Martí chose Figueroa’s Imprenta América to print the PRC’s organ, Patria. Figueroa would come to provide much of Patria’s editorial con- tent, including his long-form magnum opus, “La verdad de la historia,” an impassioned argument for Puerto Rican independence. After Martí’s death in 1895, he would go on to write and edit two other radical publications, La Doctrina de Martí and La Revista de Cayo Hueso. While Figueroa’s heart lay in Puerto Rico, his concerns were much broader, as he followed Martí in positing both a transatlantic conflict with Spain and a more insidious struggle between the burgeoning Antillean identity and the rapacious materialism of the United States. Figueroa barely mentioned the cleavage between blacks and whites in his own body of work, perhaps believing that there was nothing to add to Martí’s sweeping assertion that biological race did not exist. Rather, Figueroa wrote a great deal on issues of class for the benefit of his audience of working-class émigrés heavily involved in labor politics. Most of all, however, Figueroa’s writing is imbued with the same nationalistic fervor that he so admired in Martí as he envisioned a new Antillean society for Puerto Rico that would be a product of its own spiritual nature, and not a foreign imposition from a morally corrupt metropole. The similarities with Martí are not absolute, however, as Figueroa diverged from El Apóstol’s interpretation of history as well as his policy of including members of the Americanized Cuban émigré elite in the PRC’s mission. Race and Symbolism As a member of the mulatto working class, Figueroa represented an Afro-Hispanic community that shunned the idea of political action based solely on race. Rather, they mobilized along national and class identity. While black mutual aid societies were common, their goals had more to do with self-improvement than broader societal change. Cuban race relations were irrevocably tied to the experience of the Arts and Culture.book Page 3 Friday, July 29, 2011 5:47 PM Envisioning a New Cuba: Sotero Figueroa, José Martí, and the Idea of Cuba Libre 3 insurgency, as blacks claimed the separatist movement as their path to permanent acceptance as full citizens. Martí’s anti-racist discourse encouraged this view, as he inculcated in his followers the idea that race itself was an illusory concept which had no weight in the incipient Cuban state. In his seminal essay, “Nuestra América,” Martí made that philosophy explicit: No hay odio de razas, porque no hay razas. Los pensadores canijos, los pensadores de lámparas, enhebran y recalientan las razas de librería, que el viajero justo y el observador cordial buscan en vano en la justicia de la Naturaleza, donde resalta en el amor victorioso y el apetito turbu- lento, la identidad universal del hombre (Martí, “Nuestra América,” 1994 : 460). Black activists like Figueroa rallied to Martí's cause as his words fit perfectly with their aspirations for a society that embraced them as equals, where they would not exist on a lower stratum of colonial hier- archy. Accepting the premise, however, required selective memory of past injustice. The issue of race was a difficult one for anyone who sought to organize Cuban and Puerto Rican expatriates, yet it was central to the success of Cuban independence. Separatist supporters ran the gamut from black, politically radical cigar rollers to members of the white, moneyed elite like Tomás Estrada Palma and his ilk. To facilitate unity amongst these disparate groups, Martí elided over the island’s perni- cious legacy of slavery. In his essay, “Mi raza,” Martí lauded the Cuban insurgents of the Ten Years’ War for their drafting of the Constitution of Guáimaro, writing, “no se puede volver atrás, y la República, desde el día único de redención del negro en Cuba, desde la primera Consti- tución de la independencia, el 10 de abril en Guáimaro, no habló nunca de blancos ni de negros” (Martí, “Mi raza,” 2004: 174).

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